Herculaneum
III.16. Casa dell’ Erma di Bronzo or House of the Bronze Herm.

Excavated
between 1927-29.

Maiuri
wrote that this tiny and humble house with a narrow ground-plan, preserved up
to its end the original structure and characteristics of a Samnite house,
recognizable above all in the use of opus quadratum in tufa for the door-jambs
of the portal, the doorways opening onto the atrium and the elegantly shaped
impluvium basin.

Lack
of space later compelled simplification of the original Samnite plan and the
abolition of the rooms along the two sides of the atrium.

Internally,
other than the two rooms near the fauces, there are at the other end of the
atrium, a small tablinum, an open light-well and a large room, perhaps the
triclinium, with some remains of the decoration. Near the tablinum is a
vigorous portrait in bronze with coarse features, of local craftsmanship,
almost certainly that of the owner of the house.

The
living rooms were undoubtedly on the upper floor, reached by the stairs to be
found in the simple blind corridor to the right of the tablinum, in the corner of
which there is also a well-head.

See
Maiuri, Amedeo, (1977). Herculaneum. 7th English
ed, of Guide books to the Museums Galleries and Monuments of Italy,
No.53 (p.29).

According
to Guidobaldi, this house of modest dimensions has a Tuscan atrium reached
along a fauces with a room on either side.

In
the atrium, paved in cocciopesto, with a tufa impluvium basin, and walls that
were decorated with pictures in the Third Style, the cast of a bronze herm of
the owner of the house is displayed.Of
notable interest are the tablinum for its marble flooring, and the triclinium
at its rear that preserved central figurative paintings, including one with a
maritime landscape, which were found painted in the period of the Fourth Style.